Photo of the ICC by Celesteh

KHARTOUM, SUDAN: Crowds thronged the streets today, protesting the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. The ICC charged al-Bashir with extermination, rape, pillaging, and other human rights violations committed in Darfur. This is the ICC’s first warrant for a sitting head of state.

Laurence Blairon, ICC spokesperson, gave these reasons for the warrant:

“…intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Sudan; murdering, raping, torturing, forcibly transferring large numbers of the population and pillaging their property.”

Sudan “absolutely rejects” the ICC’s authority, referring to their decision as “neo-colonialist”.

“We will not deal with this court,” Justice Minister Abdel Basit Sabdarat told Al-Jazeera television. “It has no jurisdiction, it is a political decision.”

“It is a flawed decision,” said Sudanese presidential spokesperson Mahjoub Fadul. “We do not recognize it, nor the court that issued it and we do not care about it at all.”

Crowds in Khartoum are chanting and waving flags for their president, some going as far as to say they will defend him with “every drop of our blood”.

It’s getting really ugly there, with foreign embassies locking down and expatriates running for safe houses. The mob views th ICC’s actions as an extension of a greater Western plot.

“They do not want Sudan … to become stable,” Mustafa Osman Ismail, an adviser to the Sudanese president, said. “The court is only one mechanism of neo-colonialist policy used by the West against free and independent countries.”

Mail and Guardian article: Sudan slams al-Bashir warrant

Al Jazeera English article: Court issues Bashir arrest warrant